Informational society

The coming technology of automation, communications, and information processing, contributing to a new “social nervous system”, is discussed. The basic assumptions are that in the future, organisations will have no physical location and that man's primary activities will not be traditional work. The article suggests what this would mean for communities, economic organisations, government and the individual, and proposes a utopian institutional structure based on the stated technological assumptions.     

Through the organizational looking glass: you can't plan tomorrow's organizations with today's assumptions

It's hard to imagine what our industrial society would be like if, for instance, there were no factories. How would things get produced, how would business survive? But are we, in fact, an industrial society? Are factories going to be the prime production place for a society that is conserving energy and doesn't need to travel to work because the silicon chip makes it more efficient to work at home? Who knows what the impact of energy conservation and women in the work force will be on future organizations? One thing we can be sure of, this author writes, is that whatever tomorrow brings, today's assumptions probably cannot account for it. We are, he asserts, entering a period of discontinuous change where the assumptions we have been working with as a society and in organizations are no longer necessarily true. He discusses three assumptions he sees fading--what causes efficiency, what work is, and what value organizational hierarchy has--and then gives some clues as to what our new assumptions might be. Regardless of what our assumptions actually are, however, our organizations and society will require leaders willing to take enormous risks and try unproved ways to cope with them.     

Demographic Issues in Longevity Risk Analysis

Fundamental to the modeling of longevity risk is the specification of the assumptions used in demographic forecasting models that are designed to project past experience into future years, with or without modifications based on expert opinion about influential factors not represented in the historical data. Stochastic forecasts are required to explicitly quantify the uncertainty of forecasted cohort survival functions, including uncertainty due to process variance, parameter errors, and model misspecification errors. Current applications typically ignore the latter two sources although the potential impact of model misspecification errors is substantial. Such errors arise from a lack of understanding of the nature and causes of historical changes in longevity and the implications of these factors for the future. This article reviews the literature on the nature and causes of historical changes in longevity and recent efforts at deterministic and stochastic forecasting based on these data. The review reveals that plausible alternative sets of forecasting assumptions have been derived from the same sets of historical data, implying that further methodological development will be needed to integrate the various assumptions into a single coherent forecasting model. Illustrative calculations based on existing forecasts indicate that the ranges of uncertainty for older cohorts' survival functions will be at a manageable level. Uncertainty ranges for younger cohorts will be larger and the need for greater precision will likely motivate further model development.     

Culture Matters: How Our Culture Affects the Audit*

If the influence of national cultures on the implementation of global standards is not taken into account, the result will be inconsistent implementation at best and outright failure at worst. The experiences in fields such as medicine, peacekeeping, aviation, and environmental protection offer insight into possible difficulties with the implementation, beginning in 2010, of International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) by members of the International Federation of Accountants. Some countries may have difficulty with implementation because of the differences between their cultural assumptions and those embodied in the standards to be adopted. It is too soon to know if and where that will happen, especially because the data on first experiences will not begin to be available until 2013. However, cultural‐comparison data can be used to foresee which countries may have difficulty with implementation. But if unintended consequences do become evident, it will be important not to assume that the standards and the standard‐setting process are defective; it is more likely that practitioners will need help in interpreting the ISAs in light of their local culture. A useful first step would be for standard‐setting bodies to identify explicitly the cultural assumptions inherent in the standards they produce. The standard setters can then give that information to those responsible for standards implementation at the practitioner level to help promote consistent application of the standards globally.     

《企业所得税法》与《企业会计准则》的基础性差异分析

本文从适用范围、基本假设、会计基础等方面,对《中华人民共和国企业所得税法》与《企业会计准则——基本准则》的基础性差异进行了较为全面的分析。认识与把握这些差异,对于贯彻实施《企业所得税法》,正确履行税款征收与缴纳、纳税申报、纳税调整和加强企业所得税管理都具有一定的理论与实践意义。     

Time Diversification,Safety-First and Risk

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the effect of investment time horizon on the choice of risky assets in a portfolio when the investor in question is optimizing a Safety-First (downside risk-aversion) utility function. It is shown, under standard assumptions, that although shortfall risk decreases exponentially with investment time horizon, the portfolio asset allocation proportions remain invariant. In fact, in some instances, the optimal allocation will not even depend on the drift of the underlying assets. Thus, we extend the classical results of Samuelson and Merton, derived under conventional utility assumptions, to an individual optimizing an A.D. Roy Safety-First objective; a discontinuous utility function that has been extolled as conforming to observed investor behaviour. A numerical example is provided.     

公允价值会计对保险公司财务报告的影响

主要探讨公允价值会计对财务报告体系和结构的影响。公允价值会计对财务报告的各要素都产生重大影响,从而影响保险公司财务报告本身。其中关键的因素是保险负债的评估,虽然保险责任准备金没有直接的市场价格,但是,只要构成保险责任准备金的各种要素反映了市场价格,就可以认为保险责任准备金具备了公允价值。在假设层面上,行业假设是假设市场...     

Indirect taxation and tax incidence under nonlinear pricing

This paper study how a change in specific and ad valorem taxes under nonlinear pricing affects tax incidence. We show that an increase in either tax rate leads to a higher usage fee for all consumers, whereas the fixed fee under reasonable assumptions will fall. Finally, the model shows that the presumption in favor of ad valorem taxes over specific taxes also holds under nonlinear pricing and incomplete market coverage.     

On Testing the Assumptions of the Cash Recovery Rate Approach to the Estimation of Economic Performance

The first purpose of this paper is to investigate the necessary (as opposed to sufficient) assumptions underlying the CRR approach to the estimation of corporate economic performance. By so doing, the general circumstances in which an estimate of corporate economic performance based on CRRs will exactly equal a firm's IRR are identified. It is pointed out that these necessary assumptions are related to the concept of corporate economic performance being invoked (within the general idea that we are trying to estimate a firm's internal rate of return). Second, there is a drawing out of the empirical implications, as to the behaviour of corporate cash flows and CRRs, of the necessary assumptions for the CRR approach to produce an estimate of economic performance equal to a firm's IRR for each of these definitions of corporate economic performance. In particular, it is argued that these empirical implications depend upon the specific manner in which the CRR approach is applied in practice. A third purpose of the paper is to provide some empirical evidence as to whether an example of the practice of using the CRR approach employs data consistent with the necessary assumptions for this particular approach to be valid outlined in the paper. In fact, it turns out that this might not be the case. The evidence casts light on the extent to which CRR-based estimates of corporate economic performance are likely to be reasonable proxies of firms' IRRs.     

信贷扩张、资产价格上涨与调控政策选择

本文首先从理论上考察信贷与资产价格之间的关系,利用Allen和Gale的资产价格泡沫模型,并根据我国实际情况,通过放松假设条件说明信贷扩张是资产价格上涨的重要原因,资产供给、信贷政策、银行信贷管理能力会影响资产价格的上涨。通过对我国经济的实证研究发现,我国的信贷与资产价格之间存在相关关系,最后指出从资产供给、信贷政策、银行信贷管理等方面入手制定政策抑制资产价格的进一步上涨。     

Africa's dilemma in the transition to the new information and communication technologies

The emergence of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) has dramatically altered theoretical and practical assumptions about the role of the communication media in socioeconomic development. Today, the role of ICTs in developed and developing societies remains a subject of debate, and Africa has been caught in the middle of this debate. Advocates of ICTs, for instance, point to how the West experienced the impact of industrial technology and found it to be an indispensable tool for development. If the new technologies are good for the West, will the same hold true for the developing world? For Africa, the question is a difficult one: will the new information and communication technologies launch Africa on the path of socioeconomic development or will they subject Africa to a new form of dependence? This article argues that the communication technology which will be adopted by Africans, irrespective of how the West moves, will be the one that is easily accessible and which poses no challenge to sociocultural practices. That communication technology of the future will be the telephone.     

Developing Primary Care Groups in the New NHS: Towards Diversity or Uniformity?

This article examines how the Government's 'third way' is being implemented in relation to the involvement of primary care professionals in the commissioning of health services. Prior to 1997, the single preferred model of GP fundholding evolved into a diversity of approaches to commissioning and these approaches became increasingly collaborative rather than competitive. From this starting point, the authors examine the key assumptions underlying the present single model of the primary care group (PCG) as the commissioning body for the 'New NHS'. They suggest that PCGs will also evolve into a diversity of models, but there will be tensions arising over the greater emphasis on central direction and performance management.     

The European economy at the cross roads: Structural reforms, fiscal constraints, and the Lisbon Agenda

This paper studies the incentives to sustain and extend a monetary union under alternative assumptions about the extent of market reform within the union and accession countries. Lack of labour mobility, or wage/price flexibility, or fiscal reform, brings costs for both new entrants and in the existing union. Countries will therefore want a union where there has been sufficient reform, and also one where markets are more flexible than their own. But existing members will want the same properties of their partners. Fiscal restrictions may exaggerate this incentive mismatch and could therefore delay the necessary reforms. Similarly, too large costs up front may also delay those reforms.     

商业化背景下开行债券发行成本问题研究

商业化转型将大幅度提高国开行债券融资成本.债券融资成本的提高是否超出了国开行的容忍度,直接关系到国开行转型能否成功,以及转型后的类型,战略发展方向等一系列问题.本文采用“价值补偿”的方法测度了失去国家信用后开行债券的发行成本,然后以盈亏临界点为目标测度了开行债券发行成本的生存容忍度,以银行业平均资产收益率为目标测度了开...     

ARCH and GARCH models vs. martingale volatility of finance market returns

ARCH and GARCH models assume either i.i.d. or ‘white noise’ as is usual in regression analysis, while also assuming memory in a conditional mean square fluctuation with stationary increments. We will show that ARCH/GARCH is inconsistent with uncorrelated increments, violating the i.i.d. and ‘white’ assumptions, and violating finance data and the efficient market hypothesis as well.     

Strategic loan modification: An options-based response to strategic default

This paper presents a parsimonious barrier model for the optimal principal reset in a loan modification, thereby maximizing the loan value to the lender bank and minimizing the likelihood of strategic foreclosure by the homeowner. Writing down the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio will reduce the present value of future payments on the loan, but will also reduce the probability of default, thereby saving foreclosure losses. The optimal trade-off of these two countervailing effects will pinpoint the optimal LTV at which the loan must be reset. We present a simple barrier option decomposition of the loan value that makes the optimization of LTV easy to implement. An extension of the model is shown to account for varying growth rate assumptions about house prices. The model in this paper specifically accounts for the homeowner’s willingness to pay, and uses the framework to model shared-appreciation mortgages (SAMs).     

UK productivity and employment in 1991

Compared to prewar rates, the growth of UK productivity since 1945 has been rapid, but it has been slower than that of comparable countries. How is it likely to evolve over the next 14 years? To answer this the author makes assumptions about the population size, and the social and economic changes that will shape lifestyles in 1991. He examines productivity and employment in the UK, using four scenarios of output and productivity, presented in two versions. The four scenarios range from the continuation of past trends to the achievement of higher targets (eg EEC levels of productivity growth) : each has two starting points, the 1977 level or the average 1973–1975 level of output. The scenarios illustrate the trade off between unemployment, productivity, and growth, and highlight the possibilities facing the country in 1991: low productivity growth and a comparatively poor UK, or European levels of productivity growth and four million unemployed unless considerable changes take place. The results are not necessarily forecasts; they are the arithmetic consequences of given assumptions.     

On the constancy of the international real rate of interest

This paper develops an alternative method of deriving the ex-ante real rate of interest. Given assumptions regarding capital mobility and PPP, it is shown that in equilibrium the ex-ante real rate will be equalized across countries. Using cross-sectional regression techniques, this real rate can be estimated at each moment in time. Hence, it is possible to develop a time series of estimated real rates derived from cross-sectional regressions. This estimated real rate series is then used in time-series tests of the Fisher equation for the U.S.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Effects of Rounding on the SPF Probabilities of Decline and Output Growth Histograms

I consider the possibility that respondents to the Survey of Professional Forecasters round their probability forecasts of the event that real output will decline in the future, as well as their reported output growth probability distributions. I make various plausible assumptions about respondents’ rounding practices, and show how these impinge upon the apparent mismatch between probability forecasts of a decline in output and the probabilities of this event implied by the annual output growth histograms. I find that rounding accounts for about a quarter of the inconsistent pairs of forecasts.